An Unexpected Saviour
by francesco.gallipoli.3
Summary: Instead of simply using Fear Mist and dressing up as the children's secret fears, Sadie Macbeth decides to elaborate a more devious plan… However, she couldn't predict that a certain character would come to the rescue of one of the students… Some variations on episode 13, "Pinkertomb".


That night seemed just like other nights in Pinkerton School.

The children were in their rooms, sleeping soundly and waiting for the next day to come, as the day of one of their favourite holidays was about to arrive: Halloween!

The day of Halloween meant three things to the children: costumes, pranks and above all, SWEETS!

On that day, after attending the lessons, they could dress up as they wanted and they could pull pranks on each other ;they just didn't have to cause serious injuries or to make other classmates cry (Burt had the intention to publicly humiliate Vin with a cruel prank, but since Zero was always on the alert, he had to give up on his purpose … if he didn't want to be hung by his underwear on the coat rack, of course).

Mr. Soper liked Halloween too, as he thought that on that day children had the opportunity to play with their fears and in this way they could overcome them a little, becoming more self-confident and less shy in the process. Besides, the "fear" they felt could be defined as "fleeting, innocent, the kind of fear that makes hearts beat faster, but then people brush it off laughing", but certainly not as "bone-chilling and paralysing".

Moreover, there was a common feeling that this year's Halloween was going to be memorable.

Mr Soper and the children were quite right about this feeling, but not as they imagined…

In effect, one could say that Halloween would take a turn for the_ worse _… for _them…_

Unbeknownst to them, the plan for their undoing was already put in motion, as a solitary creature was moving stealthily through the school, and it wasn't a benevolent one…

A tall and shadowy figure was sneaking in the children's rooms, where he/she stayed for one-two minutes, before sneaking out just as quietly as he/she had entered. Locks weren't a problem, because doors were swiftly unlocked, as if they weren't even there; the only things he/she had to watch out for were to avoid waking up the children and to leave as few traces as possible of his/her presence, as he/she didn't like complications in his/her plans.

The first plan of the plan was going as smoothly as possible: one after the other, all the children had been visited and what had to be collected had been collected and stored.

There was only one room left to visit before the second part of the plan could begin.

As soon as he/she slowly pulled the door open, he/she saw the child who was trying to sleep, but he was clearly troubled by something, because he kept tossing and turning in his sleep; this child was a certain fair-haired boy, founder of a secret organization which was composed of only other 3 children, but it was fully efficient despite the limited number of its members.

Approaching the sleeping boy, the shadowy figure collected something from his forehead and placed it in one of his/her well-hidden pockets. "Here, and with this, the 'Sampling' is officially completed!" he/she said. "All I have to do now is to use their most secret, darkest fears against them!

Soon all the children will be my slaves! No one will dare to rebel! No one will try to disobey!

And with every child under my control," he/she paused, "**I WILL FINALLY DISCOVER THE IDENTITIES OF THOSE PESKY I.N.K AGENTS, AND I WILL ANNIHILATE THEM ONCE AND FOR ALL! ****NYAAAH, HAH HAH HAH HAH!**"**she** continued, gloating over the success of her plan.

She had to stop laughing evilly, though. Gloating over a successful plan with an evil laugh and taking samples from unaware subjects at night don't go together very well, because the first may cause the failure of the second, thus leading to unwanted complications.

After seeing that the boy was stirring and he was likely to wake up, Miss Macbeth dashed towards the door, she quickly opened it and left the room as quietly as possible.

A bit upset that her plan risked going up in smoke in a matter of seconds, she sighed with relief when she heard that the boy was normally sleeping, without noticing a thing.

Now that all the samples had been taken, she returned to her lair, in order to proceed with the second part of the plan, the 'Extraction'…

What did you say? Did you believe that the shadowy figure roaming through the school was Pitch Black?

No, no, certainly not! Black Pitch had just been dragged back into his lair by the Nightmares and he wouldn't come back for the time being. Moreover, Pitch is a solitary schemer; even if he had come back, do you think that he would have chosen Macbeth as an ally?

Remember who we are talking about; Sadie Macbeth is a crazy, yet rational person, she doesn't believe in mystical things and she has never showed interest in magic, alchemy or anything outside technology and chemistry (how can she fail at basic mathematics, then? Random selection of skills?).

However, if Pitch had been present, he would have viewed Macbeth's plan as remarkable for a human (but he would have been puzzled by the randomness of her actions).

The fact that the Boogeyman wasn't there changed the children's situation only a little.

They still would have nightmares for the next days…

She had hatched the scheme on that same day, thanks to Mr. Soper, who had told her about how 'important' Halloween and fear were for the children. She couldn't care less about Halloween, as she hated holidays and anything related to them. During Halloween she had to tolerate children who would put on stupid costumes, children who would play stupid pranks on each other and children who would make an awful racket without being punished! As if tolerating them for the rest of the year wasn't enough!

When Mr. Soper told her that children who couldn't express their fears risked becoming enslaved by them, he unwittingly gave her the inspiration for a mischievous plan!

Later, while the children were sleeping, she… well, you already know what she did…

She went into the children's rooms, where she put a terrible curse on them, so that they would never… no, wait a minute, that's another story! Sorry, sorry, my bad…

Where were we? Oh yeah, what Macbeth did while the children were sleeping, right…

She entered their rooms and she took some cold sweat from their foreheads with a chemical dropper, as her newest invention required a drop of it in order to work.

When she found children who were sleeping normally and probably having dreams, she decided to use a bit of Fear Mist, a dark purple fear gas she had previously prepared.

She had also taken a sample of Mr Soper's cold sweat, in order to punish him for taking part in the preparations for that "idiotic holiday" and to render him powerless in case the children should ask him for help. The name of her newest machine was the "Fear-Extractor"…

_This machine is composed of three components: the first one is the "Extractor", a laboratory centrifuge where the person who is using the machine has to place the glass tubes filled with one's cold sweat._

_After pushing a blue button, the centrifuge will start spinning the samples._

_The process of "Extraction" will be completed after a while and the results will be displayed on the monitor of the second component, the "Calculator" (a computer with large amounts of memory…)._

_The "Calculator" will then analyse the "Fear Factor" that has been extracted and the image of the darkest fear of the person from whom the samples of cold sweat had been taken will appear on the monitor._

_In order to proceed, the person has to press a red button, which will send the image into the third component, the "Transmaterializer", where it is processed and 'brought' to reality._

_The "Materialized Nightmare", or "Daymare" will then come out of the "Transmaterializer", ready to obey the person who programmed it. However, the strength of a Daymare derives from belief; if a Daymare is surrounded by people who don't believe in him or are not scared by him, it will weaken and then disappear._

This is how the "Fear-Extractor" works, or at least, this is what I understood…

The situation seemed pretty grim for our heroes, as they would have to thwart another plan devised by their wicked teacher, and they had to do it before she ruined Halloween!

They were accustomed to Macbeth thinking up plans at the least appropriate moments, the only thing they found annoying was that they were always alone against her, as everyone else was unaware of her plans.

In that mission they would be alone against her and her new underlings, Daymares… wouldn't they?

* * *

Things had changed at Pinkerton School over the course of a single day…

When they woke up in the morning, they were feeling tense and anxious, and the feeling didn't change for the rest of the day. The situation didn't improve at night, either.

Many children had trouble falling asleep; others who had managed to fall asleep woke up again damp with sweat. One of these was Fred, or Little Fred, as he was commonly called by his classmates and his teachers.

He had just woken up from a nightmare and he really needed to go to the bathroom.

He had a nightmare last night as well; in that nightmare, he encountered his worst fear, the… well, he didn't like talking about it. When he told other classmates about his secret fear, they would mock him, finding his fear ridiculous and irrational; he just couldn't help it, he had always disliked those stories where such animals devoured vulnerable animals and little children with equal ease.

In addition, he couldn't forget when he was almost scared to death in a mask shop by a "bigger boy" (a teenager) wearing a mask depicting this animal.

Despite the fact that walking alone through the school at night wasn't a very reassuring scenario, Little Fred decided to go anyway, carrying his stuffed rabbit with him in order to feel less lonely during his trip to the bathroom.

After about three or four minutes of stealth walking, the 5-year-old child succeeded in reaching the main staircase without drawing attention to himself. While he was walking towards the staircase, he had the impression of being followed, but as soon as he turned round to see who was following him, he found only darkness and silence.

"Darkness there, and nothing more." (Sorry for the quote, I couldn't resist!)

Trying to stay focused on the way to the bathroom, Little Fred mustered up his courage and he went downstairs with the aid of the handrail.

* * *

Feeling more… relieved, he went out of the restroom and he was about to go back to his room before he could be seen by someone, but a certain sound prevented him from doing that; to be precise, a sound of footsteps coming from the hallway before him, and this time he was sure it wasn't his imagination…

"Who, who's there?" Little Fred asked a bit scared, "Mr. Soper, is that you?" he asked again, hoping it was just him. No response, then the sound of footsteps intensified and the little child realized in a panic that whoever was in the hallway was now heading towards him!

The sound of those footsteps was quite strange, though, resembling a combination of human footsteps and _animal_ footsteps… a huge animal, from the sound of them…

Holding tight his stuffed rabbit, Little Fred was too frightened to notice a sort of dark-coloured mist that was spreading out in the corridor. It was only when the figure was a few feet away from him that the child recognized him; he was the last being he expected to meet in that situation, and probably also the least, given the wickedness of his actions in fables and stories alike.

Before the 5-year-old boy stood his secret fear, his worst nightmare; before him stood the **Big Bad Wolf!**

The first thing Little Fred saw was his fur: black and dense, turning into grey near his abdomen and his chest and into a shade of silver at the tip of his bushy tail. His frame was slender, but he was still well-built and strong, and the fact that Little Fred was very small for a boy of his age wasn't helpful.

His arms were long and ended with soft, yet deadly paws; black, sharp claws were in fact ready to slash any prey or passer-by that had the misfortune of bumping into him when he was hungry/angry.

The only kind of garment he was wearing was a tattered green vest, which was the result of many years' slovenliness. His head was quite large, his muzzle was long and pointed, and now it was stretched into a smug grin, showing a set of pointy fangs; the Big Bad Wolf was clearly enjoying the fear in the child's eyes, as he was wagging his tail.

The child and his nightmare remained silent for some seconds, then...

"Well, well, well. What have we here? A little lamb that has wandered off from his fold!" he said, as he looked down at the trembling _prey _before him, licking his lips in the process.

"Y-y-you!" Little Fred exclaimed stuttering, "This is impossible! You, you can't be real!" he said clinging to his stuffed rabbit. "Can't I? Then listen to this!" he said, and emitted a long howl that fully convinced the trembling child of his nightmare's existence.

"**AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!**"

* * *

Meanwhile, in another part of the school, three of our four heroes were currently trying to track that purple fear gas back to its origin with the aid of a detector that their friend Newton had built for them; unfortunately, he refused to go with them, being too scared after his encounter with a Toilet Paper Mummy in the restroom.

It would have certainly flushed him down the toilet if he hadn't darted away at once.

They were keeping their eyes on the detector: if it changed colour, the source of the gas was getting closer; suddenly, Vin stopped, looking as if he was hearing something in the distance.

"Vin, why have you stopped?" Trixie asked, looking questioningly at him.

"Did you hear that?" he asked. "Hear what, Vin?" Zero asked him.

"That sound! It was like, like… a howl, a wolf's howl!" he exclaimed, hoping that his friends had heard it too.

The two girls looked at him puzzlingly; "You must have imagined it. Let's keep going." Trixie said and went back to checking the colour of the detector.

"But, but I'm positive I heard that!" he insisted. "Cut it out, Vin." Zero said, "How can there be a wolf at school, to begin with?"

* * *

"Are you convinced now?" the fairy tale villain mockingly asked Little Fred, who slowly nodded in response.

"Are you going to eat me?" the little boy asked him shaking with fear, founding it strange that he hadn't attacked him yet and he knew that the Big Bad Wolf wasn't someone who would let preys go so easily

"You? Hah, hah hah, hah hah, hah hah! Lucky for you, not today! You're too little! You wouldn't fill me up at all!". Little Fred sighed with relief, but this moment didn't last long.

"Instead, I will eat your bunny!" the wolf exclaimed and he snatched the child's stuffed rabbit and held it above his head. "But, but my bunny is smaller than me!" "I'm not doing it because I'm hungry, I'm doing it because it's fun! Hah, hah hah, hah hah, hah hah!" the wolf said and he began to open his jaws wide.

Realizing what his nightmare intended to do, Little Fred begged him in vain, "No, Mr. Big Bad Wolf! Please, don't eat my bunny!" "Why shouldn't I do it? Besides, rabbits and hares are puny creatures! They deserve to be devoured! Now say goodbye to your bunny!" the wolf said, and he brought the stuffed rabbit nearer to his jaws. He was about to drop it into his maw, when he felt a small tap on his shoulder.

"Not now, I'm about to eat." the Big Bad Wolf said without turning round.

A second tap on his shoulder, this time a bit more persistent; "Can't you wait a minute?" he said a bit annoyed, not turning round again.

Eventually, the mysterious tapper placed a hand, or rather a _paw, _firmlyon the wolf's shoulder, making him turn round. "**WHAT! Do you want to get eaten first?!" **he snarled at that insistent meddler, without realizing who he was; when he did, he became genuinely scared…

Ironically, the one the wolf was now scared by belonged to the same species he had previously labelled as "puny"! His fur was grayish-blue, with flower-like imprints on his forehead and shoulders.

He was wearing leather bracers and a single-strap holster where a boomerang was held; another boomerang was being gripped by his other paw. Without taking his ears into account, he was already a bit taller than the Big Bad Wolf, tall enough to look him over from head to foot.

Moreover, the rabbit the wolf was now facing wasn't just an incredibly large one…

Unfortunately for him, that rabbit was a **Pooka,** a philosophical warrior rabbit, the last of his kind on Earth and one of the five Guardians chosen by The Man in the Moon to protect the children from Pitch and bring joy to the world.

As many of the readers have already figured out, the rabbit in question was E. Aster Bunnymund, Guardian of Hope and tunnel-digger extraordinaire.

As soon as the Big Bad Wolf's yellow eyes met Bunnymund's green eyes, the guardian interrupted that prolonged silence by saying "Hello, mate".

This made the wolf back away, still holding the stuffed rabbit.

"Say, what are you doing with that child's toy, mate?" he asked in a no-nonsense tone.

"Well… I…" the wolf answered fearfully, trying to choose the right words, "I… was… playing, yes, playing with this child!" he managed to articulate, adding a sheepish grin to his act.

In the meantime, Little Fred was witnessing that unbelievable scene, unsure of what to do.

He decided not to intervene for the moment, in order to see how the situation evolved.

Bunny was not amused by the wolf's explanation. "Playing? That didn't seem like 'playing' to me. It seemed like 'bullying'…

And if there's one thing I detest," he said, pointing his boomerang at the wolf's nose, "it's seeing a child being tormented by a bloody bounce!" he growled.

With ears now flattened and turned down to side, the wolf replied, "I, I was just going to give it back!" and he quickly handed the stuffed rabbit to the child telling him in a low voice, "Here, take it!", and Little Fred obeyed without saying a word.

"Now, if we're done here, I will leave right now!" the Big Bad Wolf exclaimed, and he tried to make a run for it, but Bunny prevented him from doing so by seizing him by the scruff of the neck.

"Hang on, mate. There's something else I want to ask you about" he said.

"What?"

"Could you please repeat that stuff about rabbits and hares?" he asked in a rather pissed-off tone, "I'd like to hear that again!" he added, cracking his knuckles.

The once-fearsome Big Bad Wolf turned white and began to stammer, "W-w-well, I said… what I said was… I meant… I… GOTTA GO!" and he shot off from Bunnymund with his tail between his legs.

When the Daymare reached the end of the corridor, he had become more and more indistinct, only to disappear completely a few seconds later.

Now that he had regained possession of his stuffed toy, Little Fred approached that unusual saviour, not being frightened of his size; in fact, that large rabbit inspired confidence in him.

"Thank you, for saving my bunny!" he said and hugged him, happy that the nightmare was over.

"Don't mention it, ya ankle-biter. Now you'd better go back to your room, before someone sees you" he said smiling, stroking the child's hair. Little Fred nodded and he happily ran towards the opposite corridor.

As the little child disappeared from sight, the guardian remarked, "Three minutes later and that ankle-biter would have been gobbled up by that wolf. What was that, anyway?

It wasn't one of Pitch's Fearlings, that's for sure, otherwise I would have sensed it.

Hmm… I'd better tell the others about this." he eventually decided and opened a hole to an underground tunnel; once he leaped into it, the hole closed and a small red flower sprouted from the ground in its place.

* * *

The detector hadn't changed colour since Vin, Zero and Trixie began their quest and nothing strange had happened.

When they arrived at the entrance hall, they saw Little Fred happily running from the opposite hallway and then going upstairs without stopping.

"Little Fred! What are you doing here? Little Fred!" Trixie tried to ask, but the 5-year-old child was already too far away to hear her.

"I don't think he can hear you, Trixie" Zero pointed out.

"What was he doing here? And why was he in such a good mood?" Vin asked.

"I don't know. Here's another thing we have to discover. Let's go on with the mission" Trixie said and they resumed their investigation. While they were walking down the corridor from where their classmate Little Fred had come out running, Vin stopped abruptly and exclaimed, "Hey, look at this!", pointing at something on the floor. Indeed, there was a small red flower sprouting from the very floor!

"A flower? Growing on cement here at school?" Trixie marvelled at that sight, "How is this possible?"

Zero shook her head, not having a clue about it.

"Maybe someone planted it some time ago and it has blossomed only now…" Vin suggested hesitantly.

The girls looked at each other, then Zero commented sarcastically, "Yeah, and who would have planted it, Vin? The Easter Bunny, maybe?"

(Author's notes: This is my first fan-fiction story. Please comment!

I don't own any of the characters appearing in this story.

**Rise of the Guardians belongs to Dreamworks.**

**I.N.K. Invisible Network Of Kids belongs to ****Samka Productions**** and ****France 3****.**

**The term "Daymare" has nothing to do with the point-and-click game series "****Daymare Town", which belongs to ****Mateusz Skutnik and ****Pastel Games****.**

**The verse during Little Fred's trip to the bathroom is from the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe**

I tried to stick as much as possible to the episode, but some things have been altered and/or made up, i.e. the size of the school, Little Fred's age… )


End file.
